


How It Will Echo

by stardropdream



Series: Dust on the Ground [2]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: M/M, Post-Episode: s05e13 The Diamond of the Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-11
Updated: 2014-08-11
Packaged: 2018-02-12 18:50:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2120853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardropdream/pseuds/stardropdream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merlin is waiting again, although now it is a different kind of waiting – waiting for when Arthur brightens again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How It Will Echo

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of an on-going series of "merthur in modern day" fics, but you don't have to read the previous one to read this one! Each stands alone.

In the time after Arthur returns to him (something that Merlin still thinks of and can hardly breathe for happiness), time seems to stand still – in a way that’s a pleasant kind of patience, rather than the long, painful drag of years and years that never seemed to cease – and Merlin never wants it to cease. He holds to Arthur, and Arthur holds back to him, and Arthur shivers and is so delightfully real and present and solid beneath his hands that Merlin quakes with the fear that this is just another dream, fragmented and easily lost upon awakening. But the weight of Arthur’s hands on him can only mean reality, and he breathes out shakily an sobs against Arthur’s shoulder, hears Arthur’s breathless reply that it’s alright, that he’s here, that he isn’t leaving—

And Merlin breathes out in shuddering, gasping breaths, trying to remember what it is to be human, what it is to exist, what it is to be a man who’s just gotten what he’s waited so long for – what it is to be a man who no longer has to wait. And Merlin pulls back and away from Arthur only far enough to pull him from the water, waterlogged and shivering, and pull him up towards the little cottage that, suddenly, seems a little brighter and warmer, that suddenly seems less a tomb and more a sanctuary. 

There, he can hardly step away from Arthur long enough to do anything, knowing that Arthur is mystified, knowing he is overwhelmed and unsure and uncertain and yet _breathing_ and looking around the little cottage at things that seem so mundane to Merlin now but, he realizes, can only confuse and bewilder Arthur – the toaster, the microwave, the tea kettle, the telephone. Merlin’s hands fall to him, as they did centuries and centuries ago, stripping him and drying him. His hands shake, and Merlin knows he’s crying because Arthur’s expression softens when he looks at him, standing in the middle of his room and shivering, looking very much anachronistic and yet painfully timeless. And Merlin puts him in a soft pair of sweatpants and the largest shirt he owns, and he pulls Arthur to his bed, sits him down so that he stays at the foot of his bed, legs crossed, and watching Merlin more than the world around him. 

And it’s so, so painful and so wonderful, to have that intense expression focused on him and him alone – to have never forgotten just what Arthur looks like, to have never forgotten but still longed for it all again. Merlin busies his hands for lack of anything better to do, adjusting the collar to the tee-shirt as if it needs it, to brush his hands over Arthur’s shoulders, to straighten his hair for him as it slowly fluffs up in the drying air. 

Arthur stays quiet, and at first it leaves Merlin tense, afraid now of the silence between them when all he’s wanted – for years and years – is to have Arthur again and to hear him speak again. But he can’t push it. He won’t push it. After all this time, he can afford to be a little patient, now that he sees Arthur before him. He can give Arthur these moments, to recollect himself, to readjust to the process of living and breathing, of being a human being walking upon the earth – no longer a sleeping king of Avalon. 

But Arthur tilts his head and frowns at Merlin, and Merlin feels as if he’ll cry – knowing he’s been crying since the moment he saw Arthur again and can’t stop – 

“You cheated at the dice game, too, didn’t you?” 

Merlin blinks at him, bemused. “What?” 

“You used magic. To cheat and win all my money.” Arthur doesn’t exactly accuse – but there is a quiet kind of wonder to his voice. Thinking back on a time thousands of years back which, to Arthur, must not seem so long – for time runs so differently in Avalon and the world beyond the mist. 

“… Yes,” Merlin says, because he will be honest. He will never lie to Arthur again. And there is something so delightfully endearing about the way Arthur’s brow wrinkles in his frustration after something that, after so many years, is so insignificant as to make Merlin want to laugh. He touches Arthur’s hands, tentatively, but more firmly when Arthur turns them so their palms press together. “Whatever you wish to ask me,” Merlin says. “I will answer.” 

Arthur nods and then he asks his questions and Merlin does his best to answer. Arthur asks him the questions he couldn’t before of events that seem now like distant shadows of memories to Merlin. But he does his best to answer each one, trying to paint the picture of the life they shared together, the things that Merlin couldn’t tell him before. And he tries to tell him of the life he led, since waiting for Arthur—

He starts with that. With recalling the details – the later years at first, the years that aren’t so crushing in the weight of his longing and sadness, strays away from recalling those first fifty years without Arthur, watching every friend he’d known and loved disappear into the fade. He tells Arthur about the first time he’d taken a train, and spent some time explaining what a train was. He tells Arthur about the first time he used a ball-point pen, and tells Arthur what that is. Mundane, small details, but already it feels like more speaking than Merlin’s done in decades, and it’s a strange feeling, too, to have Arthur listening to him – to grasp at every word. 

And then Arthur looks at him, and asks his questions. They start out simple. Little moments that Merlin can just barely recall, having lost so many memories that didn’t involve Arthur. Arthur asks for clarification on moments, moments that, in hindsight, he can now reasonably assume involved Merlin’s magic. And the words all stumble together, the stories and timelines mixed up, Merlin forgetting important details that, to him, never seemed that important but require the most clarification for Arthur. But Merlin promised himself a long time ago that he would never again lie to Arthur, and so he struggles and he tells the stories, and another story, and the stories beyond that, following the threads of each story as best he can, even when they branch off into a million diverging stories and side-stories. 

Arthur stays quiet, mostly, but it’s different from the years and years spent rambling to the lake, always longing for Arthur to answer back. This time, Arthur talks back – interrupting with protests, with delight and with outrage, with pain and with sadness, interrupting to ask for the clarifying questions, interrupting sometimes only by smiling – that perfect, wonderful smile that makes Merlin lose his train of thought. 

But it’s what Merlin has wanted – for so long now. To bare his every secret, from the smallest to the grandest, and see no hatred in Arthur’s eyes when he looks back at him, no fear and no hatred – only confusion, perhaps, a lack of understanding and still the lack of mistrust. 

Once he’s finished – or, at least, finished for now, drinking a large glass of water to soothe his parched throat – he reaches out and grasps Arthur’s hands, and Arthur holds them back, his eyes downcast, looking at the way their fingers curl together. 

“Does it bother you?” Merlin asks, because while not disgusted, he can see that uncertainty there. Has always read Arthur like a book – even now, centuries later. 

Arthur shakes his head, though. “No. It’s not that.”

“What is it, then?” Merlin whispers, once Arthur says no more, squeezing his hands – prompting him to talk, prompting him. Only ever wanting to hear him speak. Wanting him to trust. 

Arthur ducks his head. “I spent lifetimes in a land of magic, I suppose. Lifetimes sleeping and… restless. In Avalon.” 

“Yes,” Merlin says, his throat tight, the words thick and brittle. 

“… And after that, it isn’t the same as it was.” Arthur shrugs, going for nonchalance even as Merlin sees him struggle to try to articulate. “It’s – different. Magic. The way I see it. The way I’m… I guess I don’t really feel it, not like you do.” 

Merlin squeezes his hands. “I understand, Arthur.” 

And Merlin knows that’s the truth – for he has lived in a land of sleeping magic for just as long, waiting. He understands. 

So Merlin tells him everything that he can – everything that he can remember, in the fading, shifting, unrelenting memories he held onto for as long as he could, with the express purpose of telling Arthur when he returned.

 

-

 

The next few days are quiet. Merlin, unable and unwilling to leave Arthur’s side for long, stays exactly where he belongs. Exactly where he’s wanted to be for the past thousand years. Arthur for his part stays mostly quiet and mostly stuck to Merlin’s side in return, the only person constant in his life now that he finds himself in a world that suddenly seems both foreign and far away. There are moments when they fall back into their usual dynamic, one that Merlin never forgot and replayed multiple times throughout the years in his memories, in which Merlin teases and Arthur teases back, where Arthur insults and scoffs and Merlin smiles and insults right back—

But it ends quickly enough, too, for each time Arthur suddenly goes quiet, looking away, still and quiet. 

“Arthur,” Merlin says gently and Arthur only shakes his head and does not explain. He doesn’t have to for Merlin to understand, though, to reach out and touch his hand, to squeeze it, to demonstrate that no harm is done, that no harm could ever be done – that he’s missed this more than he could ever say. Still, it is not always enough to rouse Arthur from the quiet stillness of his mind. 

Neither of them sleep very well. Merlin, plagued with nightmares for the first years of waiting, never fully recovered from the terrible sleeping schedule and sleeps both sporadically and lightly, waking suddenly, even though he hasn’t had a nightmare in a very long time. Arthur doesn’t sleep much, and not well.

“I spent centuries sleeping,” is the excuse he offers and nothing more, and sometimes his eyes seem too far away when he looks out at the lake from the cottage window – and Merlin wonders if it would be a mercy or a cruelty to draw the curtains and block the water from sight. 

Merlin is waiting again, although now it is a different kind of waiting – waiting for when Arthur brightens again. And Merlin will be happy to leave this lake forever and not return, to take Arthur with him across the world and to see all the sights and sounds. To set upon their renewed destiny, to determine just what it is that is Albion’s greatest need – and vanquish it. 

What he knows is that Arthur is thinking of Camelot, the wound still fresh for him, although he does not say as much. But Merlin knows Arthur. Knows him still. 

Still, he rests in the bed with Arthur, in the moments when Arthur’s exhaustion catches up to him and Merlin insists that he sleeps. And sometimes Merlin manages to sleep, too, although fleetingly and intermittently – constantly waking up, as if afraid that this time when he opens his eyes all of this really will have been a dream, his hand fisted in empty sheets rather than the warm fabric of Arthur’s nightshirt. 

And sometimes Merlin wakes in the morning with his fingers curled into Arthur’s shirt – tee-shirts, while comfortable, still give Arthur pause – and Arthur is watching him, and his expression is soft and _present_ , not torn back towards the lake. Merlin feels himself close his eyes in these moments, against the joy of it. 

But he always blinks his eyes open and watches Arthur back, until it’s Arthur whose expression melts and he has to close his eyes, smiling that crooked, uncertain smile – as if still uncertain of Merlin’s regard for him, his sheer force of _love_ for him, even though he has waited for years and years. Even though it should be obvious. 

What Merlin wants, desperately, is to kiss him – but he waits for that, too. Even with Arthur here with him again, he waits – waits for Arthur to reach out, waits for Arthur to want him. But with every smile, all Merlin wants is to kiss that unknowing smile from his face, overwhelmed with it, or to kiss away the uncertainty until it becomes that knowing, delighted, confident smile that he remembers, through it all – wants the way Arthur looked at him again, now that he knows what it all meant, now that he knows that they loved one another, even when they weren’t aware. 

For now, it’s enough to have him close. It’s enough to be allowed near him, enough to have him back at all. He thrives in seeing that even breathing, that rise and fall of Arthur’s chest – and how different and wonderful and perfect it is, compared to the last time he’d held Arthur, all those centuries ago – cold and still and never far away from his thoughts, on the shores of Avalon. 

“You can’t sleep?” Merlin whispers, when he awakens from the unsettled sleep to find that Arthur is blinking at him in the dim light of an early morning. 

Arthur shrugs, which isn’t really an answer but it isn’t a complete lack of answer, either. “I’ve done a lot of that, lately.” 

The same as he always says. It’s almost comical, the way he says it, but Merlin just wants to cry. He smiles, though, and shifts a little closer, lifting a hand to touch at Arthur’s hair, which catches the sun when he turns his head, the slightest crease of sunlight that breeches past the half-drawn curtains, and it’s a bit dazzling and a bit wonderful and the ache in Merlin’s chest is heavy and ever-present, but finally starting to ease, the more and more he realizes and accepts that this isn’t a dream. 

And then Arthur yawns and stretches a little, scratching at his stomach before he can think the movement undignified and unkingly, and Merlin is hit with the sudden impulse to curl into Arthur’s side and never let go of him. He resists it, and instead just shifts to curl his arms around him, pressing his cheek to Arthur’s chest, feeling that steady heartbeat and finally seeming to relax, closing his eyes and breathing out. 

And he knows. He just knows. 

It’ll all be alright.


End file.
